Gorsuch Realty Co. is donating some land in the Hunter's Trace subdivision for a school. This land is behind Elizabeth Drive between Trace Drive and Linda Drive. / Jess Lanning/Eagle-Gazette

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The Eagle-Gazette Staff

Gorsuch Realty Co. is donating some land in the Hunter's Trace subdivision for a school. This land is behind Elizabeth Drive between Trace Drive and Linda Drive. / Jess Lanning/Eagle-Gazette

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LANCASTER — The Lancaster Board of Education on Thursday agreed to accept donated land and buy an adjacent lot in the Hunter’s Trace subdivision to build one of five new elementary schools.

The new school will sit on a tract of land between Trace Avenue and Linda Lane behind Elizabeth Drive. Mary Gorsuch donated the 15-acre site and the district will buy a nearby lot for $45,000 from Georgia Bartram. The lot will provide access to students near the West Walnut Street area.

Construction of the new school is scheduled to start in January 2014 and will take about 15 months, Superintendent Steve Wigton said.

“I welcome it,” Elizabeth Drive resident Louis Vamos said of the new school. “I’ve got grandkids, and there are a lot of little kids around here. I think it would be the perfect thing.”

Vamos said the school will be good for the neighborhood he’s lived in for 35 years.

Another Elizabeth Drive resident, Brian Carbaugh, said people are running through the land now anyway, so he has no problem with a new school.

But Mary McCoy said the school will not be good for the neighborhood and opposes it “because there’s only one out-way,” she said.

McCoy said one positive aspect of the project is the school district is getting the land for free.

“We express our gratitude to Mary Gorsuch for her donation,” Wigton said. “Hunter’s Trace is a housing area where we have a lot of students. It is in an area where a lot of students can walk to.”

He said because the site sits on a hill, some site preparation work will be needed before construction starts.

The school board already has secured sites for the other elementary schools. One will be built in River Valley Highlands off Greencrest Way and the other three will be built where Medill, Tallmadge and North elementaries now stand.

The school district will demolish North Elementary at a cost of $143,000, with the state chipping in for 35 percent. Wigton said the plan is to start the demolition in early December with a Feb. 1, 2013, completion date. The district awarded Paschal Bihn & Sons Excavating, of Toledo, the demolition contract.

The budget for the elementary school construction project, which will result in one pre-kindergarten-through-fifth-grade elementary school and four kindergarten-through-fifth-grade elementary schools, is $81 million. The state share of the project cost is $28.4 million, and the local share is $52.6 million.

District officials tentatively hope to open the first three elementary schools in 2015 and the last two schools by August 2016.

Wigton said the Hunter’s Trace school is scheduled to open in time for the 2015-16 school year. He did not have a cost estimate for that particular school.